Invigoration and Pride About What Democracy Can Look Like

There’s an old truism: If you want to sound like a fool, just say, “You know, I’m really optimistic right now about the Middle East.”

I don’t want to be a fool. There are deep, possibly insurmountable, divisions in Israeli society. I know that Israel cobbled together the most radical, right-wing governing coalition in its history, and it has a substantial base of support. I know what Israel’s demographics look like, and they aren’t good.

“To those on the ground and in the streets: Thank you. You fill me with Zionist pride and democratic, patriotic inspiration.”

But what can I say? Today I realized that my heart is filled with… if not optimism, at least a sense of invigoration and pride for Zionism and the Israeli people. And it’s thanks to those protesters in the streets of Israel.

Maybe it’s because spring is here and the sun is shining. Maybe it’s because Pesach is right around the corner, with its promises that freedom always wins out against tyrants eventually.

Whatever the cause, I’m full of hope and admiration—yet again—for Israelis. Just seeing the depth and breadth of the protests against Netanyahu’s cynical attempt to overhaul Israel’s judiciary and to strip the nation of its democratic checks and balances gives me an enormous sense of appreciation for the vitality of Israelis.

Just consider some of these astonishing items:

·      The unceasing momentum: For 12 weeks, the streets of Tel Aviv and every other major city in Israel have been filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters, especially on Saturday nights – and the demonstrations are getting larger, not smaller! What endurance and momentum this movement has shown.

·      The size:  Israel has a population of about 12 million people. Hundreds of thousands in the streets, week after week? Can we imagine what percentage of the population has shown up? The photos, of course, are awesome…

·      The breaking news: Monday morning, the embassy and consulates of Israel in the United States are closed – the staff is on strike! All part of the protest against the assault on the judiciary and Netanyahu’s firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had the chutzpah to suggest pausing the radical legislation in the name of national unity. When have the embassies of any nation ever closed, on their own accord, in an act of protest against their own government?!

·      The flags: The protests are awash in swaths of blue, with Israeli flags prominently displayed and people singing Hatikvah. This is no anti-nationalist movement. The demonstrators are patriots standing up for democratic norms that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

·      The diversity: Despite Netanyahu and his minions’ desire to paint the demonstrators as anarchists, outside agitators, or worse. The truth is that the protests are the mainstream of Israeli society: reservists refusing to serve; military leaders refusing to show up; members of the center-left and center-right calling for sanity and a return to decency. And now the Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor union—over half a million members, including airport workers, civil servants, and those government officials overseas—adds its voice.

How about this amazing scene: the Israel Philharmonic playing the national anthem at this week’s Tel Aviv protest!

THIS is what democracy looks like. And even though it’s emerging in desperate times, it’s invigorating to see.

This is a culture that is saying yesh gvul, there is a line that has been crossed by corrupt leaders who defy the will of the people—and then try to smear those righteous protesters with lies and propaganda.

As I’ve said, perhaps it will come crashing down tomorrow. The news cycle moves very quickly, and what I’ve written here may be out of date quickly. Netanyahu is corrupt, but he’s far from stupid. Maybe he’ll ram through his reforms, come what may. Maybe he’ll wag the dog with a military strike against Iran, and then call for “Jewish unity.” Maybe a cosmetic compromise will be achieved and the demonstrations will fizzle.

So I don’t want to foolishly say, “I’m optimistic about the Middle East.” But for now, my heart is filled with gratitude to those righteous protesters in the street. They should be an inspiration to lovers of democracy everywhere. We should be supporting their efforts in every way we can, especially in American Jewish and Zionist institutions to whom we pay dues. (We must demand of them: “Where do you stand?”)

To those on the ground and in the streets: Thank you. You fill me with Zionist pride and democratic, patriotic inspiration. And I’m counting down the minutes until I can come and join you!

What "Pro-Israel" Must Mean Today

רִבִּי יוּדָן נְשִׂייָא שְׁלַח לְרִבִּי חִייָה וּלְרִבִּי אַסִּי וּלְרִבִּי אִמִּי לְמִיעֲבוֹר בַּקִּרֵייָתָא דְּאַרְעָא דְּיִשְׂרָאֵל לִמְתַקְנָא לוֹן סָֽפְרִין וּמַתְנִייָנִין. עֲלוֹן לְחַד אֲתַר וְלָא אַשְׁכְּחוֹן לָא סְפַר וְלָא מַתְנִייָן. אָֽמְרִין לוֹן. אַייתוֹן לָן נְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. אַייְתוֹן לוֹן סַנְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. אָֽמְרוּן לוֹן. אֵילֵּין אֵינּוּן נְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. לֵית אֵילֵּין אֶלָּא חָרוּבֵי קַרְתָּא. אָֽמְרוּן לוֹן. וּמָאן אִינּוּן נְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. אָֽמְרוּן לוֹן. סַפְרַייָא וּמַתְנִייָנַיָּא. הָדָא הִיא דִּכְתִיב אִם י֙י לֹא־יִבְנֶ֬ה בַ֗יִת וגו׳.

 Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi sent Rabbi Chiyya, Rabbi Assi, and Rabbi Immi to tour the towns of the Land of Israel…
They came to a place where there were no Torah teachers. They said, “Bring us the guardians of the city!”
The locals brought them the political leaders.
The Rabbis responded, “These are not the guardians of the city. These are the destroyers of the city!”

–Talmud Yerushalmi, Chagigah 1:7

 This Talmudic text is resounding today, as the despicable Betzalel Smotrich—incredibly, unbelievably—arrives in the United States as an envoy of Israel and as a featured guest at a Washington, DC, gala for Israel Bonds.

“We will fight to protect her from enemies from without—and within. ”

This is disturbing beyond belief. Israel Bonds, historically, has been the most apolitical of organizations; a trustworthy, mainstream body that markets a fine and secure way to invest in the infrastructure and well-being of the State of Israel.

Smotrich, on the other hand, is a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of Torah and Jewish values. He is a Kahanist, a racist, an inciter to violence. His statement last week that the Palestinian town of Huwara should be “wiped out”—as hundreds of his constituent settler extremists rioted there—is only the latest outrage of someone who has no business representing the State of Israel.

The fact that he is Israel’s Finance Minister and a minister in the Defense Ministry only shows the desperation of Prime Minister Netanyahu to elevate beyond-the-pale extremists to support “judicial reforms” that seem primarily designed to keep Netanyahu himself from being indicted.

This is not about partisan politics, not really. The fact that 300,000 people demonstrated in Israel’s streets this weekend—for the 10th week in a row!—shows that a plurality of left-center-and center-right is saying yesh gvul/there is a limit to what we will accept in a civilized society. Not long ago, Meir Kahane (יימך שמו—may the name of the wicked be blotted out) and his supporters were considered unacceptable, and were barred from sitting in the Knesset. Today, Netanyahu builds his coalition around them.

So what does it mean to be a supporter of Israel in these uncharted waters?

That’s the question I’ve been thinking about for weeks. Consider how astonishing it is: American Jewish leaders, proud and lifelong supporters of Israel, are demonstrating in front of Israeli consulates and the Grand Hyatt Hotel in DC where Smotrich is holed up. We are making our voices heard to local Israeli envoys that this government’s actions are beyond the pale of the normal discourse of left-and-right. Some even considered lobbying the Biden Administration to not grant Smotrich a visa to enter the country.

This pushback is amazing, and completely unprecedented in the 75-year history of Israel. It  also raises some questions about what it means to be “pro-Israel” at this time.

Let’s be absolutely clear: this anguish is coming from a place of desperately caring about Israel’s security, well-being, and, frankly, its soul. This is not coming from the extremist fringe of the American Jewish left, like the Orwellian-named Jewish Voice of Peace, which has long established their de facto support for Israel’s real and intractable enemies.

Israel constantly faces the threat of delegitimization, especially on college campuses and in progressive forums. And antisemitism is still a very real concern in the U.S and around the world. We certainly don’t want to fan either of those flames. So what is a concerned supporter of Israel supposed to do?

Here are my suggestions:

1.     Make absolutely clear: to be a Zionist is to support the righteous demonstrators in Israel’s streets right now. Every Thursday and every Saturday, Israelis have been demonstrating. The press is covering it as a single issue: opposition to Netanyahu’s “judicial reform.” But it’s wider than that: it’s also about deep-rooted fear for what this Coalition of Hate means for Israel’s soul.

We must be using every means at our disposal, including all our social media, to say, “As lovers of Israel, we support the demonstrations and condemn what this government is trying to do in our name.”  

2.     Engage more than ever. This is not the time to disappear from the conversation. Our Israeli brothers and sisters are making it utterly clear (as three prominent centrists made clear in this crucial letter last month): We need you now, more than ever.

That also means putting our money where our mouth is. If engagement begins and ends with kvetching on Twitter—well, that’s the coward’s form of activism. It is imperative that we send our financial support to organizations that are standing up for justice and democracy—not to mention forms of Judaism that are an alternative to the theocrats’ vision.

Personally, I support Hiddush—Freedom of Religion for Israel; the Israel Religious Action Center; ARZA; the Shalom Hartman Institute; and flourishing Reform and Conservative communities on the ground in Israel. Not to mention organizations that are doing the hard work of Jewish-Arab bridgebuilding, such as Givat Haviva and Shorashim/Roots. There are many others—all of them need our support and encouragement in these fractious times.

3.     It’s about Mishpachah. And Love. The Prime Minister and his amen-crowd will call us traitors. That’s the tactic of cowards.

But American-Jewish criticism of Israel must come from a place of love. That is, when I consider the people whom I love (and who love me), I don’t support everything they do. When someone I love is actively hurting themselves or going down a devastating path, it is my responsibility to step in, to let them know what I see, and to urge them—sometimes forcefully—to change course. But I don’t disappear.

If people we love disappear when times are tough, well, we might appropriately question whether they ever truly loved us in the first place. This is true, too, over our relationship with Israel.

The short-term future won’t be easy. Many American Jews will simply want to disengage, exhausted. And others, more perniciously, will say, “See—this is the real face of Zionism all along.”

But it’s about time that liberal Zionists make their position absolutely clear: Israel is our family, an astonishing chapter in the history of Judaism that yields perpetual gifts to contemporary Jewish life.

And we will fight to protect her from enemies from without—and within.

Moreover, the pro-Israel position must be clear. To paraphrase the language of the Talmud: Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and their enabler Netanyahu are not the “guardians of the city.” They are those who would destroy it.

Topol's Most Amazing Feat

A brief thought about Chaim Topol, the legendary Israeli actor who died at 87 on Wednesday, that the obituaries seem to have missed:  In his acting career, he pulled off a pretty amazing feat. He simultaneously became the iconic onscreen Ashkenazi Jew and the iconic Mizrachi Jew.

Of course American Jews know Topol from his role in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof.  As Tevye, he took over the role that heretofore had belonged to Zero Mostel on Broadway. Movies have more staying power—and a broader reach—than stage performances, and for two generations it’s been Topol who has been the quintessential Tevye the Dairyman, the onscreen incarnation of Sholom Aleichem’s shtetl everyman.

This has always been my favorite scene from Fiddler:

But years before Fiddler, he was already immortalized to Israelis in the classic film Sallah Shabati—where he played the quintessential Mizrachi Jew.

Sallah Shabati is a satire about the Aliyah of the Middle Eastern Jews in the 1950s. I’ve watched and taught the film many times—as far as I can tell, it’s not explicit which country these Jews have arrived from. (It may be Yemen or Iraq). And their arrival is one comic disaster after another.

Sallah’s family arrive “on eagle’s wings” in the new country full of idealism and excitement. But they’re quickly shunted to a ma’abara, an impoverished settlement town for these new arrivals, which has more than its fair share of squalor. The movie was poignant and fairly controversial in those early days of the state, because it skewered all sorts of sacred cows: the kibbutz (presented as a place of chaos and laziness), the immigration authority (an utterly inept bureaucracy), political parties (cynical manipulators who look for ‘ethnic types’ to garner votes) and so on.

It's a comic take on the vicious and ugly racism the Mizrachi Jews received at the hands of the Ashkenazi elite with their socialism, secularism, and European touchstones. By contrast, the Mizrachim were religious—kabbalistic, even; had less familiarity with modernity and its implications; and culturally had more in common with the Palestinian Arabs than the kibbutzniks.

The very name “Sallah Shabati” is a double entendre: a perfectly legitimate Judeo-Arabic name, but also a pun that could mean “excuse me for coming here.”

Here's my favorite scene from Sallah Shabati, the song “Hamashiach Hazakein” (and watch the two Ashkenazi politicos, who spot Sallah and are eager to recruit him to Labor Zionism):

The movie Sallah Shabati is notable in additional ways. It was written and directed by Ephraim Kishon, a Hungarian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor. (In the death camp, Kishon was lined up with other inmates against a wall; the Nazis shot every 10th person in line. Kishon survived, and ultimately escaped while the Nazis were transporting him to Sobibor.) The movie was the first Israeli film to be nominated for an Academy Award (in 1964; it lost) and it still holds up today. In fact, it’s an important document to remind people of the terrible racism the Mizrachi Jews experienced at the hands of their Israeli brothers and sisters.

Anyhow, what a remarkable feat to portray both Tevye and Sallah!

(Two slightly sour reflections here. First, I wonder if in today’s identity wars, some would object to his playing both of these ethnic roles: be one or the other, but certainly not both of them.

Second, I’m thinking of the protesters in the streets of Israel these days. A sharp satire like Sallah Shabati reminds us all that sometimes the absolutely most patriotic thing you can do is to raise your voice and point out the injustices, or worse, that your country is perpetrating.)

Hats off to Topol, for pulling off this great feat! יהי זכרו ברוך.

Purim after Huwara

This week, leading up to the holiday of Purim, has been an awful one for anyone who cares about Israel and the Jewish people and the Image of G-d, tarnished and violated as it is. Violence in Israel is spinning out of control.

On Sunday, two brothers, Hallel and Yagel Yaniv from the Israeli settlement of Har Bracha were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

On Monday, another terrorist murdered Elan Ganeles, a 26 year-old Jewish man from Connecticut, in the Jordan Valley on his way to a wedding near Jerusalem.

“The measure of our integrity will be how forcefully, how clearly, we speak out against these forces. To make clear that the filthy ilk of Smotrich and Ben Gvir will not be the defining voices of Judaism and Zionism.”

We mourn them without equivocation. We are pained as part of the interconnected body of the Jewish people, and we insist that their killers be brought to justice.

And then there is Huwara.

After the murders of the Yanivs, scores of radical armed settlers stormed through the Palestinian town of Huwara, rampaging through its neighborhoods throughout the night, burning houses and stores and cars, and leaving at least one man dead.

Even some Israeli military leaders are calling the settler rampage a “pogrom.” And it’s not hyperbole. After all, “pogrom” is the term that was created to describe mob violence against the Jews of Europe with the backing of official institutions like the Church, the government, and the press. Huwara would seem to be the first Jewish-perpetrated pogrom in history, as far as I know. The most radical elements in the government coalition have been seeding settler vioence for a long time—and have spent the past few days since the riot nodding at the perpetrators.  That should make every one of us shudder with nausea and disgust.

After all, perhaps the biggest disgrace is how all this was so predictable. For weeks, it has seemed like Israel is coming apart at the seams, as the most extreme and vicious coalition in its 75-year history gives its blessing to hate. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been pouring into the streets to demonstrate, week after week, show that this government is beyond the pale in it extremism for a huge swatch of this democratic society.

The despicable Bezalel Smotrich—a Kahanist, a racist, and also the Finance Minister who shares responsibility for civilian affairs in the West Bank—says, “Huwara needs to be wiped out.”

The vile Itamar Ben Gvir—another former leader of Kahane’s movement, the man whom Netanyahu saw fit to make National Security Minister with authority over the police in the West Bank—“likes” a tweet from a settler leader saying “Huwara should be erased today.” Ben Gvir is sponsoring a bill calling for the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists, while as of this writing no Israeli terrorists have been arrested for the Huwara violence.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu—who raised these men and others to positions of authority; a disgraced leader who has demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt to have not a shred of decency or integrity—has the audacity to compare hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Israel’s streets to the pogromists in Huwara!

(By the way, as of this writing, Smotrich is still the invited guest of American supporters of Israel Bonds in Washington, DC next week. It is imperative that American Jews make clear: Smotrich is persona non grata; he is not welcome in our communities; he must be denied a U.S. visa. He is a disgrace to everything the Jewish community stands for; a true Hillul Hashem.)

It may feel like Israeli society is imploding. I happen to think Israeli democracy is resilient—but not automatically so. For far too long, Israelis and the American Jewish community have been complacent about the poisonous weed of hate that has sprouted in the Israeli far-right. Now that it has moved to the mainstream, given authority and power by a corrupt and desperate Prime Minister. Will we continue to make excuses for it?

Democracy is a muscle that needs to be exercised or it will atrophy. I, for one, see a battle before us for the soul of the Jewish state. It is of desperate importance that anyone who cares about the Jewish future realize their stake in this, and that we do everything we can to support those hundreds-of-thousands-strong protesters for democracy and decency.

What might we learn from this week’s horrors—and how can we celebrate Purim on Monday night in the shadow of Huwara?

Let’s talk about the Megillat Esther.

Esther, it must be recognized, is a comic Jewish revenge fantasy. It’s not historical; it’s a rich and quite marvelous satire, that takes in lots of targets.

We need to understand the comic dimension of Esther in order to grasp the violent denouement that takes place the end of the book:

For Mordecai was now powerful in the royal palace, and his fame was spreading through all the provinces; the man Mordecai was growing ever more powerful. So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies. (Esther 9:4-5)

…

The rest of the Jews, those in the king’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil That was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar; and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking. (Esther 9:16-17)

In Esther, Jews who have been terrorized and threatened with mass destruction suddenly find themselves in a position to control their own destinies, with the precious ability to defend themselves against those who would destroy them. And then they massacre their enemies.

Did Esther anticipate Huwara?

We should note that violence—exaggerated, cartoonish violence—is an audience-pleaser. Consider, for example, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. It, too, is a revenge fantasy about a group of American-Jewish soldiers out to wreak revenge against every Nazi they can find in WW2-era Europe. The violence is grotesque, over-the-top, cathartic: at the end, Hitler and Goebbels and the entire Nazi senior staff are memorably executed by the “Basterds” en masse. Whether or not you find this entertaining (I must admit, I do) depends entirely on your sensibilities and your tolerance for fantasy violence.

To understand Esther, you have to understand the genre in which it is written. Esther is operating in this sort of mode. Did the Jews historically—in the name of self-defense and retribution against their genocidal enemies—slaughter 75,000 Persians? Of course not. It’s the projection of a community who heretofore has been oppressed.

And too many people don’t get what the Megillah is trying to teach with its outrageousness.

The theme that permeates Esther is inversion—events turn out to be 180 degrees from what they are expected or supposed to be. “…The very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power” (9:1).

But it’s not just the inversion of events that happens in Esther. There’s also an inversion of people:  And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them (8:17). Can you imagine?! Those Persians were so scared of the Jews that they even pretended to be Jewish!

And perhaps that’s what’s behind the violent retribution of the Jews in Chapter 9 of the Megillah. When the Jewish defense squads of Shushan go wild and kill tens of thousands—is it so farfetched to say that this is the greatest inversion of all? Their enemies act like Jews, and the Jews act like their enemies!

And here’s where I’m going to stop laughing this year.

Because, as we know, humor is often a tool that reveals deeply hidden truths. “If you want to understand a society,” said Rebbe Nachman in one of his greatest stories, “you have to understand its humor.” Humor exposes things that a community strives to keep under wraps.

The Megillah predicted that Jews are just as capable as anyone of behaving monstrously. Huwara proves this to be so. In Huwara, we saw that Jews are just as capable as anyone of behaving monstrously, just as Esther predicted. Is there anyone left who believes that Jews, once in power, are immune from committing horrible acts? Everyone is capable of atrocities, and just because, on the historical balance sheet, Jews have usually been the victims, that is no reason to believe Jews can’t commit horrors. Huwara proves that, Q.E.D.

The measure of our integrity will be how forcefully, how clearly, we speak out against these forces. To make clear that the filthy ilk of Smotrich and Ben Gvir and the rioters crying for blood will not be the defining voices of Judaism and Zionism. Every one of us has to say yesh gvul (there is a limit to what we will allow in our names), and we must be the voice of democracy, decency, and justice—as envisioned by our Torah and by the founders of the State of Israel.

On Monday night, I’ll be with my community and we’ll read Esther again. We’ll boo and drown out the name of Haman; we’ll celebrate Esther’s bravery. We’ll drink a few L’chayims. But I’ll be reflecting on how Purim is ultimately about inversion and disguises—and how those Purim costumes have a powerful way of revealing deep truths about what lies behind the mask of seemingly civilized people.  

Parashat Tetzaveh - Israel's Ancient Ouija Board

Hi Friends,

My commentary on this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10), The Urim & Tummim: Israel’s Ancient Ouija Board, is now posted to Hebrew College’s 70 Faces of Torah page.

Enjoy!

Closing One Book & Opening the Next: 3 Years of Daf Yomi

“An ignorant person cannot be pious / לֹא עַם הָאָרֶץ חָסִיד,” said the 1st century BCE sage Hillel (Pirkei Avot 2:6). No other religious faith of which I know would quite make such an astounding claim.

Like all polemical statements, it’s unfair and exaggerated, and it probably would be considered irredeemably elitist if not for two mitigating factors:

1.     We’re all ignorant, at least in the vast sea of wisdom known as Torah and knowledge of G-d. That’s why every volume of Talmud begins on page 2: to teach spiritual modesty. In the words of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, “However much a person may have learned, we should always remember that we have not even gotten to the first page!”

2.     The Torah is an open book; Judaism does not secret away wisdom. It’s available to anyone who seeks it out with an open heart, and in our generation there are more classic texts available at our fingertips than at any other time in human history—and in translation! It’s all there for the taking, waiting for each of us.

So there’s more to Hillel’s statement than meets the eye. It means that learning—acquiring the knowledge that potentially leads to wisdom—is a Mitzvah; that is, a primary religious activity.

A week or two ago, I (and many others) reached a personal milestone: the 3-year anniversary of the cycle of Daf Yomi, the daily study of a page of Talmud. It takes 7½ years to go through the entire Talmud, which is the size of a set of encyclopedias—so we’re not even halfway through the cycle.

Daf Yomi is a phenomenon. The idea was proposed in 1920 by Rabbi Moshe Menachem Mendel Spivak (b.1880), a Polish rabbi and renowned figure in the Torah world of Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. The idea was carried forward by Rabbi Meir Shapiro (b.1887), the head of a great Polish yeshiva in Lublin and a leader of European Orthodox Judaism.

These two visionaries promulgated the astonishing proposal that, all over the world, Torah students would study the same page of text on the same day. With Rabbi Shapiro’s spearheading, the daily regimen of Daf Yomi began on Rosh Hashanah in 1923. It’s now in its 14th cycle and approaching its centennial year, with tens of thousands of adherents—Orthodox and liberal Jews, women and men alike.

There are no days off: we read our daily page on Shabbat and even Yom Kippur; it accompanies me on family vacations, and so on. For some, it is a social endeavor: they learn with a partner or a group (known as studying in chevruta) and listen to online lectures or podcasts about the Daf Yomi. For me, it’s a more private experience, as I’ll explain.

Even though I’ve had a passion for Talmud throughout my adult life, I’d always kept Daf Yomi at arm’s length. And for good reasons.

First, there’s a whole world of Torah study out there besides the Talmud, and I have a short attention span and a wandering mind. So by committing to daily Talmud study, I feared I was missing out. What about Hasidut? And Midrash? And Zohar? And all the other pearls of Jewish spiritual literature?

Second, I’ve been involved in a one-on-one Talmud chevruta for over 20 years. My partner Ben and I used to scoff at the very idea of Daf Yomi. After all, he and I move so slowly when we read Talmud together, and try to go deeply into the meaning of the text, so our pace is unhurried. We might spend our lesson on just a few lines; a whole page could take us months to complete. And a whole volume of the Talmud can take us years! A page a day? Ha! How superficial the speediness of Daf Yomi must be, just to get through it all!

I must admit, some of that thinking remains—and Ben and I still proceed at the same glacial pace as ever. But I approach my Daf Yomi regime differently than my learning with Ben. I treat it as a spiritual discipline. I typically have 45-60 minutes to devote in the morning, and I do what I can. I read the Hebrew/Aramaic text, but when I get stuck, I have no problem looking to an English translation as a crutch.

And if the discourse on the page gets too bogged down in pilpul—the logic gymnastics that assume every contradiction must be resolved and every debate of the early Sages must be smoothed over—well, I move on. My goal here is breadth, not depth.

While I might have scoffed at “breadth, not depth” in the past, I see now that there’s an excitement about mapping the Talmud from the 10,000 foot view. I’m excited to know that, at some point 3¾ years from now, I’ll have visited and made notations on every page of my massive Talmud set that casts its shadow over my workspace.

There are days when it can be daunting. Last year, the Daf Yomi community around the world worked its way through 122 days/pages of Tractate Yevamot: over four months devoted to the arcana of the Torah’s laws of levirate marriage, the ancient law that if a man should die childless, his brother must marry his widow in order to produce an heir. It can get, shall we say, a bit esoteric.

On Tuesday, we’re completing another volume: Nedarim, 91 days/pages devoted to the biblical laws concerning the declaration of vows. It can be pretty obscure stuff, and it demands a certain amount of discipline to persist.

Yet the Talmud is famously ADD, and there are pearls to discover along the way. For instance, in one of many asides in Nedarim, we find this wonderful passage:

Rav Yosef said: A sick person will forget his learning.
Then Rav Yosef himself fell ill, and he forgot all of his learning. Abbaye restored it [by learning] with him. This is why we say [throughout the Talmud] that Rav Yosef would say, “I never heard this law,” and Abbaye would reply to him, “You taught this to us directly, and it was from this baraita [earlier teaching] that you said it.” (Nedarim 41a)

My comment: Like the Torah, the language of the Talmud can be concise and blunt. But embellishing this story in my head, it becomes very emotional! I picture Rav Yosef, the wizened teacher, whose capacities have diminished because of the ravages of age or illness (maybe a stroke?). Perhaps his other students have left him behind, leaving a disabled old man to his caretakers. Yet here is his student Abbaye—one of the giants in 3rd-4th century Babylonia—gently talking Torah with his teacher and reminding Rav Yosef of the divine wisdom that is inside him.  

And:

Rabbi Yochanan said: Initially Moses would study the Torah and forget it all, until it was given to him as a gift, as it is written (Exodus 31:18): When G-d finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, G-d gave Moses the two tablets of the Pact. (Nedarim 38a)

My comment: I can relate, Moses. I wish I had a fantastic memory and could retain all the wondrous things I’ve read in the past few years. But what a treasure books are: repositories of wisdom to go back and revisit…!

If all this sounds very rigorous, one of the first things I discovered was: I find that I wake up in the morning anticipating getting to my desk and to the Talmud, to resume the conversation with Rav Yosef and Abbaye, Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer, Hillel and Shammai, and all the others.

So, onward… to, um, tractate Nazir: (only!) 66 pages devoted (ostensibly) to the laws of those who take the Nazirite vow in an ascetic desire to be more spiritual. No matter how arcane the material, I know that the discipline Daf Yomi accords me is good, and I know that there will be jewels embedded in the road along the way.

Image: the opening side of the first page of the first volume of the Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 2a

Giora Shkedi ז״ל

A great soul has departed the world, and I’d like to share a few words to honor his memory.

My friend Giora Shkedi died at about 4:00 am on Wednesday, and the funeral—with customary Israeli speed—took place near his home in Tel Mond at 2:30 later that day.

The funeral itself was a good reflection of Giora’s Israeliness and his modesty. It also struck me that in three ways it was very Israeli, in sharp contrast to American Jewish funerals:

1.     Jewish tradition encourages us to conduct funerals speedily after someone dies, an expression of כבוד המת/preserving the dignity of the deceased. Yet Giora’s funeral was a quick 9 ½  hours later on the very same day—a turnaround which would be unheard-of in American Jewish life.

2.     The informality of the service was wonderfully Israeli—sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers on many of the mourners. Israeli informality is one of the things I cherish most about their culture.

3.     After the service, Giora’s body was lovingly placed into the soil of Eretz Yisrael—without a coffin, again in the Israeli style. He was returned directly to the land that he served so loyally.

Giora was a consummate Israeli kibbutznik: rugged, charming, a man of few words and deep integrity. He was also a war hero: a veteran of the Yom Kippur War. On October 11-12, 1973, he participated in a legendary and daring raid deep inside Syria under patrol command Major Shaul Mofaz. In essence, the mission was to sabotage a road leading from Iraq to Damascus, where the Iraqis had been supplying weapons and heavy artillery to the Syrians to attack Israel. As is common in war stories, the initial mission went askew, but Mofaz and his troops improvised and ultimately achieved a triumphant and strategically crucial operation for the Israelis, one that seriously hampered the Syrian assault.

Of course, I prefer to think of Giora not as a war hero, but as a Mitzvah hero.

After he married my friend Anita, her life’s work became his as well. Together they became the preeminent practitioners of therapeutic horseback riding (“equine therapy”) in Israel. First they founded the Therapeutic Riding Club of Israel, and subsequently they created INTRA-Israel’s National Therapeutic Riding Association (both organizations have now closed). If you’ve never seen therapeutic horseback riding in action, it’s important to understand how integrated it is. Physical therapy is just the beginning of the story; their work also had astonishing results on people with less-obvious sorts of disabilities: blind people, people with learning disabilities, people with emotional and anxiety-related disorders, stroke victims, and so much more… including PTSD, which is currently the field where Anita is doing all sorts of amazing work. (I highly recommend her very powerful book, Horses Heal PTSD: Walking New Paths, which is full of incredible stories of healing.)

For many years I watched Giora work with clients on horseback—children or adults, people from all walks of Israeli life, Jews and Arabs—and he would guide them with gentleness and compassion. Afterwards, he or Anita would tell miraculous stories about the healing that they brought about. It was often a variation on a theme: “See that kid playing soccer over there? The doctors said he would never walk again…” Likewise with victims of domestic abuse, or victims of terror, or wounded soldiers, or… you get the idea.

Even though Giora and Anita confronted each day the most heartbreaking stories of lives that had been shattered and broken, they (and the horses, of course!) went about their work with modesty, understatement, and gentleness. The number of lives that they repaired (including, it must be remembered, family members of their clients who were desperate for hope) is just staggering.

For me, Giora and Anita were among the very first Mitzvah heroes I ever met when I began my friendship with Danny Siegel. They became one of the very first projects we took on at the Kavod Tzedakah Collective. I resolved to spend time with them on every visit to Israel, and I was determined to bring as many tour groups as I could to visit their farms where they would do their miraculous work. For me, the sites where they did their therapy were some of the holy places of Israel.

Anita, surely, will continue to flourish as one of the world’s great experts on equine therapy, carrying on the incredible work that she started decades ago.

There is much more to say about this remarkable man; Abba, Sava, husband, and friend. Giora’s sweet and loving memory is indeed a blessing—and an inspiration to seek out Mitzvah heroes, those who quietly yet profoundly do the work of repairing broken bodies and spirits and make them whole. I was fortunate to be his friend.

Jon Stewart Buries the Lede

On Stephen Colbert, he deftly changes the subject

There’s been a lot of public, celebrity-endorsed antisemitism in the past few weeks, which is painful as hell. And lest you think it’s being overblown by the Jewish establishment, trust me: the Jewish college students I work with are talking about it and they’re feeling it.

I don’t feel compelled to publicly respond to every case: Kanye, then Kyrie Irving, then Dave Chappelle on Saturday Night Live. Especially because everyone else is chiming in, I don’t feel like I have much to add to the conversation.

The first problem isn’t how we respond to antisemitism. It’s antisemitism itself.

But I was watching an extended interview with Jon Stewart on Stephen Colbert last week, and that was a tipping point for me. Perhaps because of the fact that I’ve long admired Jon Stewart, and I have a special affection for his sort of political comedy with a creamy moral center. And because my personal politics often line up with his.

But that’s why I was so troubled by his appearance on The Late Show. I might have expected a vigorous defense from a prominent Jewish celebrity. Instead, he deftly changed the subject.

(He got off a few good lines; he always does. “I wasn’t on the [secret conspiratorial] committee that lost Kanye the Adidas deal. I’m on the committee that does oil prices and bagel flavors.” “Kyrie Irving, they suspended him from playing basketball. If you want to punish him—send him to the Knicks.”)

Stewart spent most of his time decrying the responses to antisemitism; the cancellations and so on. He quotes Dave Chappelle’s monologue, “It shouldn’t be this hard to talk about.” As if the heart of this problem was about free speech or the right to say bigoted things.

Jon Stewart sounds smart and compassionate when he speaks. He quotes Kanye, saying, “Hurt people hurt people,” and that instead of covering up hate you need more conversation. He implores us to consider the Black perspective, with its history of oppression, and suggests that each of these things—Kanye, Kyrie, Chappelle—are howls of pain from people who have been historically oppressed.

I agree with every syllable. So what’s the problem?

The problem is burying the lede. The first problem isn’t how we respond to antisemitism. It’s antisemitism itself.

I agree with everything Stewart said about free speech, the imperative of actually listening to oppressed communities, the ugly futility of cancel culture, etc. Those are important and thoughtful topics for discussion.  But the point is that all those things are secondary to the actual story here: Extremely famous people said extremely bigoted things, with the very real possibility of those things leading to violence against an already shaken community. And if he had the integrity to name that pain, he might have had a little more moral authority to make these other points.

The story of Dave Chappelle’s rant on Saturday Night Live isn’t “Will he get cancelled now for saying edgy things?” The real story is: His nasty words exacerbate the pain in a community already on edge.

Do we have to do this again? Does Jon Stewart, or Dave Chappelle, have any sense of the context of the surging wave of antisemitism? Does he realize that Chappelle’s monologue occurred two weeks after synagogues throughout New Jersey were on lockdown because of a “credible threat” of violence against them? Do we have to mention the shorthand of one-word names that we’ve all come to know in the past few years: Pittsburgh, Poway, Monsey, Charlottesville…?

Once again, a prominent progressive thinker has shown that every community’s pain is legitimate—except for the Jewish community’s. Jon Stewart might spend this Thanksgiving reading English comedian David Baddiel’s shocking book Jews Don’t Count, to see firsthand how antisemitism is the progressive community’s dirty secret.

But this is a recurring pattern. A few weeks ago, Brown University’s Hillel building received a handwritten threat of violence. Thank G-d, it didn’t pan out, and after a day or so, a perpetrator was caught (not from the Brown community) and the students’ safety was assured.

Yet these were the first two sentences of the letter that the Jewish community received from the university’s Vice President:

“Our country continues to experience deeply troubling and disturbing levels of division, intolerance, and discrimination.

On Sunday afternoon, staff at Brown RISD Hillel discovered an antisemitic note in a reception area, and this follows reports in recent weeks of other incidents against Jewish, Black, Asian, LGTBQ+ and other underrepresented individuals on campus and in the surrounding community…”

She just “All Lives Matter”ed us!

If we learned anything from Black Lives Matter, it’s this: each community’s pain is uniquely their own. To shovel all forms of discrimination into the same bin is a form of erasure—and it’s its own kind of racism.

And that’s the progressive Achilles heel of Jon Stewart’s interview as well.

Jon Stewart pretty much invented late night comedy that could be topical, progressive, and still funny as hell. If only his Jewishness was a bit more self-aware and informed, I’d be laughing with him this week.

This Week In Antisemitism: אף על פי כן / In Spite of It All

As I do periodically, I thought I might share with you my weekly email to my students at Babson College here in MA. Several of them privately shared their fears with me this week, as once again antisemitism made headlines. This time, it surfaced via the unapologetic voices of two the most famous people in the world—with two of the largest online followings in the world. If you read through to the end, please note my postscript that I’m adding for this blog. —Neal

Unfortunately, it was a rough week in the news for Jewish Americans. Because this week, anti-Jewish hatred reared its ugly, snarling head from two directions. 

The most famous entertainer in the world spewed an irrational, hate-filled tirade on a popular podcast and (of course) on Twitter, where he swore to go, um, “Deathcon 3” on “the Jews.” Simultaneously, the former President stoked antisemitism again when he claimed American Jews weren’t “grateful enough” for his past support of Israel and they should “get their act together” “before it’s too late.”  

The fact that both of these statements sound like threats of violence is bad enough for a community on edge. And the fact that both of these individuals have massive numbers of followers, some of whom belong to antisemitic blocs who might take these comments as dog whistles, is even worse.  

After all, the Jewish community has experienced a terrifying rise antisemitic assaults in the past few years—unprecedented in our lifetimes—to know that violent language unchecked inevitably leads to violent actions. Do we have to go over, once again, the list of the Jews who have been killed, the synagogues that have been attacked, and the Jewish institutions that have been vandalized?  

But what feels so awful this week is that the hatred has been so coarse and… old. Here's what I mean. 

Every minority group has a history of being victimized by bigots. And for each group, there is the coarsest, grossest sorts of stereotypes with which they’ve been slandered. Think about it for a minute, and you’ll know what I mean. 

So, the Jew-hatred that we’ve seen this week struck all the most ancient and archaic tropes. Kanye’s hate included: the Jews run Hollywood and the media; insidious Jewish power blocs will shut down anyone they disagree with; Jews are rich and their moneyed interests manipulate the world. These are the most disgusting and, well, clichéd forms of antisemitism, and it’s so sad that there is still a large and eager audience for them. 

What Kanye missed the former President picked up on. That’s the slander of “dual loyalty:” You must not be “real Americans,” because your secret loyalty lies elsewhere—namely, the State of Israel. Haven’t we all had enough of this man’s pathetic charges that if you’re not with him, you’re anti-America?  

Money. The media. The banks. Secret power. Dual loyalty. There’s nothing new here; it’s all the classic forms of anti-Jewish hate. And it was all thrown in our faces this week very publicly by very famous and influential people. 

So where do we go from here? Where do we find hope?  

As for me, I find hope in you. In the Jewish community, there is hope to be found whenever someone asserts their Jewish identity, embraces their heritage, and refuses to be afraid. The Torah emphasizes joy and love, and I’m determined not to let haters steal those things from us.

And outside the Jewish community, there is hope to be found whenever people stand united with each other against hate and say: we refuse to let others’ lies and slanders turn us against each other. Love and decency win out in the long run, even if they seem to get trounced in the short run.  

Earlier this week, an interfaith and multicultural group of students, faculty, and staff gathered beneath the Babson Globe to stand in solidarity and prayer, simply to bear witness to the pain and suffering in the world. It was very powerful, and I left the Peace Circle filled with hope and energy. 

I had the privilege of closing that gathering, and I shared the following words from the 19th century mystical master Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav. (Bratzlav, by the way, is in besieged Ukraine.) These, too, are words of hope: 

וְדַע שֶׁהָאָדָם צָרִיךְ לַעֲבֹר עַל גֶּשֶׁר צַר מְאֹד מְאֹד
וְהַכְּלָל וְהָעִקָּר – שֶׁלֹּא יִתְפַּחֵד כְּלָל 

Know this: That each person must cross a very—very!—narrow bridge.
And the rule, the fundamental thing, is:  Not to be afraid. 

Shabbat Shalom, 

Neal 

That’s what I wrote to my students. Here, I’ll add that two other things happened to me this past week that also gave me hope, along the lines of the themes that I included in my final paragraphs above:

In the spirit of interfaith sharing, I felt lucky to be part of a discussion panel that met at First Parish Church in Weston, MA earlier this week. Each panelist - representing Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Baha’i faiths - spoke on the theme of “Hope in Our Fractured World.” There were about 100 people in attendance. And it was quite lovely; a gathering of people of good faith, seeking a bit of common ground, understanding, and perspective from one another.

Second, there was Simchat Torah. And it occurs to me that in recent years, Simchat Torah could be subtitled, אף על פי כן / “In spite of it all…”. In other words, we know that there’s a lot of pain in the world, as institutions and protections and beliefs we took for granted sway precariously. And in spite of it all: This week, we took the Torah in our arms and danced and sang. At least, that’s what we did at the Walnut Street Minyan in Newton, MA. And it was beautiful and joyous, and filled with hope, as we bid the holiday season farewell, and prepared to face the winter that is coming…

Why We Fast

Nobody loves to fast. It’s supposed to be discomfiting. But fasting on Yom Kippur actually becomes a problem when it interferes with the greater purpose of this day; when it distracts our intentions rather than amplifying them.

Why fast? How does fasting enhance the experience of Yom Kippur?

The big picture is that Jewish tradition puts a variety of tools at our disposal in order to enhance our Teshuvah. One of those tools is the Machzor and its poetry, as it is customary to spend much of the day immersed in communal prayer. Another tool is Tzedakah: giving generously for the purpose of World-Repair. This is imperative, because it is important not just to talk about change, but also to put it into action.

But the most obvious observance of Yom Kippur is fasting. For those who are physically able—there is no Jewish value in damaging or hurting ourselves—fasting serves a variety of purposes.
 

1.     Fasting is about stepping away from the physical to focus on the spiritual. We set aside material things, like food and drink, to reflect on questions that are… Higher.

For one day a year (the other fast days have very different messages), we allow our spirits to sustain our bodies, rather than vice-versa.

2.     Fasting is about discipline. So much of our lives—and so many of our problems—can be attributed to the need to satiate our appetites. Showing ourselves that we have the strength to not be controlled by these appetites (they may be unhealthy attitudes towards food, work, money, sex, control, or many other things) is an important part of taking back control of our lives.

This is important. So many of the “sins” and “transgressions” that we encounter in the Yom Kippur liturgy stem from the Yetzer Ha-Ra, that impulse within us to satisfy our appetites and therefore to focus on the basest, coarsest, most materialistic and physical aspects of living. That’s not always a bad thing. A midrash teaches:

“And it was very good” (Genesis 1:31)—This refers to the Yetzer Ha-Ra.

This is astonishing: Can the Yetzer Ha-Ra really be considered “very good”?! Yes: If not for the Yetzer Ha-Ra, a person would never build a home, get married, have children, or go to work. (Bereishit Rabbah 9:4)

The point is that we must control and harness our appetites, to direct them towards things that are constructive rather than destructive. When we control them, they can be for a blessing. When they control us, they leave a trail of destruction—personally, environmentally, and so on—in their wake.

3.     Fasting is about empathy. When we go a few hours without eating, we feel it. That feeling should remind us of the great numbers of people, some of them quite nearby, who know hunger (of all sorts) every day. Our discomfort, modest as it may be, is supposed to make us more compassionate, more generous, more sensitive to the needs of others. It is one thing to say it; it is quite another to feel it in our kishkas.

This is what Isaiah was getting at in the extraordinary Haftarah on Yom Kippur morning (Isaiah 58) – “Is this the fast I desire?...” It’s amazing how the tradition smacks us with these words at just about that point in the morning when our stomachs begin to growl, when we start to become aware of the fact that we skipped breakfast.

I’ve said it before: Empathy is the most human of emotions. Animals can be compassionate; every pet owner knows that. But empathy means that I can feel for other humans whom I’ve never met, who may be far away from me. (My dog does not feel affection or concern for canines he has never met in other states or continents.) This year, as I fast, I’ll be thinking of those who are rebuilding their lives after Hurricane Ian. I’ll certainly be thinking of the people of Ukraine and their righteous fight against Putin’s aggressive war. And I’ll be thinking of the extraordinary women of Iran who are casting off their hijabs and defying the authority of the Morality Police. To cite just a few examples.

Rather than thinking of fasting as a struggle, we should consider it a gift. It is one more tool in the arsenal of Yom Kippur to trigger the deepest possible spiritual awakening on this day, and to help make real the lofty and ambitious challenges that the day puts before us.

May your fast be deep, meaningful, and rewarding.